The call is the front door
Every job starts as a call, a text, or a booking. Every one of those that does not become a scheduled job is a leak: demand you already paid for, gone to the next name in the search results. Intake is the discipline of closing that gap: by the time the call ends, a job exists, with a truck's name on it or a slot waiting for one.
What intake captures, once
Who and where
Name, phone, and the service address. If they have called before, the record is already open.
What is wrong
In the customer's own words. No water. Rattling. Wet cabinet floor.
How urgent, honestly
Active leak or a drip that has dripped for a month. This decides everything downstream.
Access
Gate code, tenant's number, the dog. Asked now, not discovered at the curb.
Check yourself
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What should exist by the time a good intake call ends?
The board is the day
The dispatch board is one screen: every job, every truck, every state. The whiteboard photographed at 7 a.m. and the group text are both retired. Drag a job to a tech and their phone already knows. No radio call, no relay. When the day changes, and it will, the board is where it changes, and everyone reads the same change.
The three states
Open
The job exists and needs a truck. It is real, scheduled, and unclaimed.
En route
A tech has the job and is driving. The customer can get the on-my-way text.
On site
The truck is in the driveway. The clock of the visit has started.
Check yourself
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Luis taps En route on his phone. What does the office see?
When the emergency lands
At 10:40 a no-cool call comes in and it cannot wait. The board shows the answer without a phone tree: Jordan is on site, Luis is en route, Maya's afternoon can move. The dispatcher drags one job, calls one customer whose window slid, and the emergency has a truck. The day absorbed it because the day was visible.